‘For better for worse’ revisited

“…To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part…” — “The Book of Common Prayer,” 1979

Forty years ago this June, standing in front of friends, family, Father George, God and a hopeful future at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Milwaukee, I said the words nearly every married couple says — for better for worse.

Like most people in their twenties, I understood those words in theory. I assumed the “worse” would arrive as an occasional inconvenience — job stress, a leaky roof, a pricey car repair, maybe a lean year or two. I did not imagine it would someday look like hospital corridors, rehab and caregiving schedules, medication charts, and becoming a 24/7 certified nursing assistant without the certificate. But here we now are.

On Oct. 13, my wife fell and severely fractured her femur. God never intended femurs to be bent that way. For 16 years in the North Woods until my October 2023 retirement from volunteer firefighting, I was on the pager side of emergency calls. Now, I was the one dialing 911 and pacing in circles, waiting for the paramedic ambulance crew to arrive. In an instant, life narrowed — and it’s no exaggeration to say that our shared life will never be the same. 

There was orthopedic surgery, then nearly a week in the hospital, followed by what became almost three months in a nursing home rehabilitation facility. The calendar pages flipped, the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holidays came and went, my father-in-law passed away, and the simple rhythm of our shared life was replaced by visiting hours, care plans, and cautious optimism measured in inches and degrees of bend.

Eventually, last week, she finally came home. That was the milestone we had been waiting for — but it wasn’t the finish line by any means. It was the beginning of a new chapter neither of us had auditioned for.

I am now the primary caregiver, the de facto 24/7 CNA. The one who helps with transfers, medication schedules, physical therapy exercises, dressing, personal care, and the thousand quiet tasks that keep a household functioning, including the shopping, cooking, cleaning and laundry. I still work full-time — remotely, thankfully —thanks to an understanding and generous employer who has allowed me to do my job from home, even if it is deep into the busy heart of the 2025-2026 hockey season. My workday now exists in the margins at my team-issued laptop at the dinette table between caregiving duties, the season ticket holder emails, texts and voicemails answered with one eye on the clock and the other on the next need.

This is not a complaint. It is simply the truth of the days.

Caregiving is both intimate and invisible. There are no applause lines for changing dressings or helping someone relearn how to trust their own body again. There is no instruction manual for the emotional whiplash — the gratitude that she is alive and home, the grief for the independence we both lost, the exhaustion that settles into your bones, and the guilt that follows any moment of wishing for a break.

The vows come back to me often now. Not in a dramatic, cinematic way, but quietly, usually at three in the morning when sleep won’t come. For better for worse. I understand them differently now. They are not a promise that the worse won’t be hard. They are a promise that when it is hard, you stay.

There are small victories that keep us going. A successful transfer from hospital bed to wheelchair and back again, a gait belt firmly in hand for stability and safety. A tentative small step taken with more confidence and less pain than yesterday. Laughter over something absurd in our new life together. The way gratitude can coexist with frustration, and love can deepen even as patience wears thin.

What I have learned — and am still learning — is that marriage is less about grand gestures and more about showing up repeatedly when the script has been thrown out. It’s making peace with a much smaller world for a season of unknown length. It’s accepting help when it is offered and learning to ask when it’s not. It’s recognizing that strength does not always look like stoicism. Sometimes it looks a lot like admitting you’re tired and you need a caregiver respite.

I don’t know how long this season we’re in will last. Recovery is not a straight line, and neither is caregiving. But I do know this: those words we spoke nearly 40 years ago were not religiously poetic filler from “The Book of Common Prayer.” They were a commitment we couldn’t fully understand then, but one we are living now — day by day, step by step, together.

This is the “worse.” And this, too, is love.

News-Review freelance columnist Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.